I’ve just had a proper argument. My circle of friends and even a few colleagues at Dennis will tell you, this isn’t unusual of itself, so I won’t do the down the pub routine that relies heavily on the phrase “So then I said…”. I’ll give you the helicopter view.

It was an argument about Wi-Fi. I went to a meeting to go through re-wiring a retail shop to accommodate a CCTV system, the sales PCs, the PDQ card-payment setup, and the email workstation. There was also a couple of new ventures, in the shape of kiosks for customers to look through the website and ask about styles, sizes and colours not visible in the shop.

At this meeting were the proprietors, me, and a jobbing interior decorator. The list of snags, water leaks and bits of paint and the like was long and diverse: then we came to the wiring. Just a small shop, but very quickly we arrived at a total of 15 locations. It’s also an old building, which means that it won’t be falling down any time soon; but conversely, drilling holes is going to be a proper rufty-tufty builder’s job, one I am very glad I won’t be undertaking. Looking at the job in hand, the jobbing builder decided to propose a different approach: Why not just put in wireless?

Once the idea occurred to him, it snowballed. With Wi-Fi, customers could just be given an iPad, and wander freely around the whole space, paging through the website. How cool would that be? Wires aren’t needed then. I suggested this might not work out very well, given the background level of theft in that specific shop and the surrounding area too: and that it might not be terribly secure, in an area so full of other shops, offices, homes and restaurants. This is when the conversation kicked up a gear.

We are one of the last great self-taught professions, and from that many difficulties follow

The jobbing builder clearly believed that there is no such thing as a Wi-Fi security problem. To the point where anyone who suggested otherwise was to be cross-examined in an incredulous tone. There is no such thing as a passive Wi-Fi traffic listener Trojan, or those websites that crack WPA2 keys, or people whose credit card numbers or bank details are stolen via Wi-Fi or traffic spoofing. As far as he was concerned, Wi-Fi was the future; the idea that it could be much more expensive and complicated to segregate the network so that the CCTV in the changing cubicles didn’t get re-broadcast across the rest of the planet was, apparently, a stupid thing to suggest. All those videos on YouTube like this are clearly fakes.

I confess: I lost my cool with this tirade of ignorance. At the same time, I was thinking about Part P.

For those who have not come across it, here is the IET’s summary of Part P:  it’s the regulations that attempt to control who is allowed to do electrical wiring work. When introduced, I must say I agreed with the antis, because it seemed to me completely absurd that there could exist anyone who didn’t know how to wire up a wall socket correctly. It only takes a small tickle with 240v AC to entirely convince anyone of the need for proper safety in wiring. I can’t have been the only small boy to have successfully hidden the burns from an incautious poke about in the guts of a radio, surely…

This conviction faded slightly after I saw my first few 13A sockets with bare wires wedged into contact by the earth-pin shutter, and other similar sins, until these days I am pretty much entirely in favour of the concept of Part P. If someone wants to do that kind of work, then go and get the qualification, is now my attitude.

This is a very unusual conclusion to reach if you are a “computer person”. We are one of the last great self-taught professions, and from that many difficulties follow. Assuming that everyone is equally able to teach themselves, and equally able to draw the right conclusions from an individual view of a wider body of evidence, is (I believe) our greatest sin. This hasn’t been that much of a problem while IT and networks in particular has been the province of a priesthood, a charmed circle of übernerds: the problem comes when network technology starts to permeate into the skill levels that gave rise to Part P.

I’m trying to be polite and it might not work in my current mood, so I’ll settle for blunt: thick people think differently from nerds. It’s not a matter of less of something, like an IQ score, instead it has many aspects and parts. There’s emotion, there’s ego, there’s ownership of the topic, there’s animal cunning versus lofty and mistaken intellect: it’s a rich minefield of disasters, at least if your tempter works like mine.

The clever thing to do with this type of problem is to avoid getting dragged into Meldrew-like expressions of exasperation, but I will say that the inception and history of Part P makes me worry about the take-up of IP networking in the wider population of trades. Part P protects against a simple phenomenon – a pretty immediate and intensely memorable electric shock; good small network design protects against a rather more subtle, long-term and generally less physically painful series of mishaps.

But the underlying point to Part P remains that incidents arising from electrical wiring put in blithely by workers and DIYers, quite convinced they were doing it right, were prominent enough that Health and Safety decided to get involved. There is no equivalent body for network data security – unless, that is, you count the loss adjusters who now turn up when your bank account is emptied by an online data theft incident, and seek to prove that you were negligent in your use of the bank’s website to get them out of reinstating the contents of your bank account.

Happily for me, this particular client had been dealing with that type of mishap already, and were also better diplomats: they pointed out to the builder that he couldn’t very well remark on the superior strength and thickness of the Victorian buttresses and brickwork, and then recommend Wi-Fi. This contradiction provided a way out of the contretemps without too much loss of face all round – something that, as a classic nerd, I never have been very good at ensuring.

There are so many devices and routers now using the unlicensed space between 2,400MHz and 2,475MHz that finding a quiet, undisturbed channel for your network to reside on is nigh on impossible. That’s why we recommend anyone upgrading their wireless router chooses a dual-band model — one that gives you the option of connecting in the less congested 5GHz frequency band.

This can be a difficult concept to grasp without visual aids, so let me show you exactly what we mean when we talk about RF congestion.

Using our recently-acquired Wi-Spy spectrum analyser (kindly supplied by Metageek for use in a forthcoming wireless router Labs), combined with the firm’s Chanalyzer 4 radio frequency (RF) analysis software, we recorded the above graph.

It shows all the RF activity in the vicinity of the PC Pro office, and can detect not only nearby wireless networks – of which there are an alarming number — but also other devices using the 2.4GHz band.

Look closely and you’ll see that, on channel 8, there’s a non-Wi-Fi source of interference, represented as three bright stripes in the bottom “waterfall” window: I’ve not tracked down the culprit yet. To the right, the broad red/green stripe flanked by two narrower vertical green  lines shows you the devastation a cheap wireless video sender can wreak.

While this might seem a rather extreme example, I’m sure that many living in densely populated urban centres will be surrounded by a similar level of congestion and interference. Just imagine how many baby monitors, cordless phones and wireless routers there are in a modern, central London block of flats, and you’ll get the idea.

It’s frequency band bedlam out there, and the effect is slower, more unreliable wireless networks. Now take a look at the 5GHz band at the same location:

The difference is quite staggering — an oasis of calm by comparison, with only PC Pro’s own dual-band wireless router interrupting the tranquil RF landscape.

If that doesn’t get you hankering after a dual-band router, then nothing will.

Today’s Metro has a spectacularly sensationalist headline (that’s now been changed on the website) screaming from its front page: “Android phones ‘all leak secrets’”. That’s potentially worrying if, like me, you’re an avid Android user – after all, if I wanted my phone to be less private than Jordan’s holiday, I would have bought an iPhone (only joking Apple lawyers).

According to Metro, “almost all” Android phones are vulnerable to a problem that allows “criminals to steal users’ personal information”. That’s done, theoretically, by hackers using unsecured Wi-Fi networks to gain access to the data contained within your phone’s Calendar and Contacts applications, according to researchers at Ulm University, in Germany.

In fact, the chances of your phone leaking all of your secrets is marginal at best: you’d have to connect to an unsecured Wi-Fi network, and anyone with the slightest bit of techy common sense knows that connecting to unsecured networks is a big mistake on any device.

The long and short of it is far simpler and less dangerous than Metro’s sensationalist headline makes out. Any device that connects to an unsecured network is vulnerable; indeed, if you hook up your laptop to an unsecured connection then you’re potentially opening yourself up to losing far more than your calendar and contacts – bank details, for instance, or vital passwords.

Typically, Metro buries another major caveat towards the end of its story: that Google has already fixed the issue in Android 2.3.4, which is currently being released for the Google Nexus One and Nexus S – and will surely be rolled out across a whole swathe of other devices.

There’s no doubt security is important, but this issue is marginal; numerous devices will soon have this gap plugged by updates and, in any case, it only affects Android users if they decide to risk connecting to an unsecured Wi-Fi network. Metro’s making a mountain out of a molehill and, if you’re an Android user with the slightest bit of common sense, it shouldn’t worry you one jot.

Should it? We tend to review the Wi-Fi-only models of tablets, because that’s what we’re usually sent. We’ll mention the 3G options in the review, but it’s up to manufacturers to decide whether to offer them or not, and up to consumers to buy them.

It started a debate, one which began in the office and spilled over to the PC Pro podcast as well. Then I posed the question – to 3G or not to 3G? – on Twitter, and it generated an unexpected level of response.

Obviously, it does all depend on what you’ll use it for, and plenty of you said you’d buy with or without 3G depending on that. But just as many came out firmly on one side or the other, with no clear winner.

In the 3G corner…

Led by @bazzacollins.

Senior staff writer @mikejjennings: “A supposedly “mobile” device without constant (network-dependent) net access? No thanks.”

Contributing editor @PaulOckenden: “Huge yes from me. What if you’re out of Wi-Fi range?”

Contributing editor @JonHoneyball: “I wouldn’t buy a tablet unless it had a 3G socket/modem built in. I might not buy a sim immediately, but…”

Plenty of readers agreed with those sentiments.

@allpointsnorth: “3G for me, but only cos I’m on the go a lot - replaces dongle. Cloud/Openzone not always that reliable either.”

@MarkTechArc72: “3G is a must – for a mainly information consumption device, what’s the point if you have no internet when you’re out?”

@the_pc_doc: “Manufacturers not offering 3G as an option will go the same way as the dinosaur or the dodo…”

And a few picked up the travel theme too:

@mikehamer: “iPad 3G was very useful on our holiday in Italy (with Italian SIM). Google Maps on its big screen was fab.”

@smithsocksimon: “3G is handy if you travel, cause you can buy a local SIM for each country.”

It was left to Mr Honeyball to offer some sensible advice: “Buy it with 3G but without SIM. Buy a monthly contract SIM like 3 for 15 quid. Try it both ways. You’ll hate Wi-Fi-only mode.”

In the Wi-Fi corner…

Led by @Bayonnaise:

@tomaszrykala: “3G isn’t a must, as the research confirms, majority of tablets don’t ever leave the house.”

If you do leave the house, a huge number of people suggested different ways to get data…

@chatanm: “I’d recommend a Mi-Fi and Wi-Fi tablet instead of 3G tablet. More flexible and the battery life would be better on your tablet without 3G.”

@MerseyMal: “For the rare occasions away from Wi-Fi would use phone. Don’t want two 3G contracts.”

@alanjrobertson: “It’s a no from me – seems to add about £100 + extra contract to cost. Happy with Android Wi-Fi hotspot function instead.”

@jim_herd: “Big issue for me is only paying for one data contract. Makes Mi-Fi or mobile tethering the way to go.”

And several people came up with the same response regarding their experiences with 3G tablets.

@johnny_winter: “I bought 3G iPad last year. It wasn’t necessary so cancelled 3G SIM. Can use personal hotspot on iPhone if required now.”

@itf: “Got a 3G iPad, never used the 3G.”

The judges’ decision

Those are just a few of the tweets we got, but the result is hardly surprising: some people want 3G in a tablet, some people don’t, and it’s entirely dependent on where you are and how you use it.

We even got a response from @MattJEgan, editor of (boo hiss) rival PC Advisor, supporting both sides: “Yes [to 3G]! Commuter, etc. That said, the PC Advisor Reviews Ed has a Wi-Fi iPad and carries a 3G MiFi dongle for all his toys.”

All of which I suppose vindicates Barry on his original argument: it is a bit short-sighted of Asus not to give the option.

On the cover of this month’s magazine (on sale today) we ask: what’s killing your Wi-Fi? Among the many answers – and solutions – you’ll find in our cover feature is one supplied by our Real World wireless expert, Paul Ockenden.

“Modern homes constructed largely of plaster board also use signal-bouncing foil coating in bathrooms and kitchens,” Paul offers as one possible reason for erratic Wi-Fi reception.

Judging by a walk past a local housing development, it’s not only kitchens and bathrooms that are being turned into giant Faraday cages – it’s the whole house.

The picture above shows a new-build property being wrapped, from floorboards to rafters, in a material called Protect TF200 Thermo. A quick Google search for the material in question uncovers a detailed PDF explaining its many benefits, including “enhanced thermal protection” and “high tear strength”. What it doesn’t explain is the effect this material will have on radio signals such as Wi-Fi, mobile phone, or even digital radio and television reception. I sent an email to the company’s technical department two days ago, but have yet to receive a reply.

There’s one line in that PDF that should set alarm bells ringing however: “Protect TF200 Thermo provides a highly reflective yet permeable low emissivity layer.” I wouldn’t mind betting that highly reflective layer might well bounce your radio signals in an unpredictable fashion.

If owners of these brand-spanking new houses move in and discover they can’t get a reliable Wi-Fi signal in the garden, or that they can’t get a reliable 3G signal on their smartphone, that foil-like coating might well be the culprit. Conversely, it might even improve Wi-Fi signals internally by mirroring the signal.

The real issue is the new homeowners probably won’t know what’s causing their Wi-Fi woes. Unless they’ve looked at the plans in fine detail, or happened to pass by while the house was being constructed, that foil wraparound will be obscured from view by their exterior wall. Modern insulation regulations are all well and good, but is anyone even considering the effect this stuff has on radio reception?

So if you’ve moved into a modern home and are wondering what’s killing your Wi-Fi, the answer might well be the house itself. And short of tearing the walls down and starting again, there’s probably not a lot you can do about it.

Samsung has announced a swathe of cameras at CES, but one in particular caught my eye. Not the Samsung NX11, with its intelligent lenses that allow you to adjust settings on the lens itself; not the WB700 with its astounding/ridiculous 18x optical zoom; but the SH100, which can back up photos wirelessly simply by being close to your PC.

In fact, you get the feeling there’s very little this camera can’t do. You can stream photos and videos to compatible TVs, for example, and send photos direct to Facebook if you’re on a wireless network.

And as Steve Mitchell, general manager of Samsung UK’s Digital Imaging division, explained to me, that’s just the start: “You can actually pair it with an Android 2.2 device and control the camera functions from, say, a Galaxy.

“So you can put the camera high above your head or in a remote location and then actually control it from your phone – so you can see what the viewfinder sees, zoom in and zoom out, and do shutter release as well.”

As the name of this blog post rather gives away, however, what’s also rather clever about the SH100 is that it can wirelessly back up photos direct to your PC.

If your PC supports Wake-on-LAN, it doesn’t even need to be switched on. “If you actually bring your camera in range of your PC then it will power it up, give you a dialog box saying ‘new photos detected, do you want to download them’. It’s a similar system to the Eye-Fi cards that we’ve reviewed in the past.

The SH100 comes out in March and will cost around £199.

In a nutshell, anyone who provides an open Wi-Fi connection – be that a company with a free hotspot in their reception or a home user who decides to leave their router unprotected – will be held responsible if someone downloads copyrighted material on their connection. (Unless, bizarrely, they are a coffee shop or other business that offers Wi-Fi access in conjunction with other goods or services, in which cased they’re treated as an ISP).

In its draft proposals, Ofcom issued the following guidance:

“Those who wish to continue to enable others to access their service will need to consider whether [to] take steps to protect their networks against use for infringement, to avoid the consequences that may follow.”

When I asked Ofcom’s press office what steps someone could take to safeguard their network, other than password-protection – which by definition means the end of open Wi-Fi – the regulator unhelpfully suggested that users should talk to their ISPs.

At a Westminster e-Forum on file-sharing yesterday, BT’s director of group industry policy, Simon Milner, summed up the ridiculousness of this position. “How on earth do you try to prove that you didn’t infringe copyright [on your Wi-Fi connection] and didn’t take reasonable steps [to protect the connection]?” he asked.

Joining BT on the panel was Ofcom’s director of policy development, Campbell Cowie. So I once again took the opportunity to ask him how people can run open Wi-Fi connections and not be held responsible for passers-by downloading copyrighted music on them. His reply: “Your ISP is best placed to advise”.

This simply won’t do. It’s pure cowardice on the part of the regulator to issue proposals stating that those operating Wi-Fi hotspots will be held responsible for the actions of others, and then not tell hotspot owners how they can protect themselves.

As Lord Lucas, who was chairing the debate, said after hearing Ofcom’s reply to my question: “I do think Ofcom is ducking its responsibility.”

“These are critical bits of proof that people ought to have available to them,” Lucas added. “We have to provide consumers with a good and robust defence.”

We need answers, Ofcom. And we need them fast.

(Image via F-Secure’s Mikko Hypponen)

I played with the Blik RadioStation a while back, and I must admit that I was thoroughly impressed. It was the first combined DAB, FM and Wi-Fi radio I’d seen, and the sound quality was good enough to easily bag it a recommended award.

Not content to rest on its laurels, though, Blik has thrown another audio source in to its new model. Now you get three flavours of radio and an iPod dock. In the time-honoured tradition of iPod accessories, the model name has been preceded with a meaningless “i”, to become the iBlik.

None of us here in the labs have an iPod, so it’s my duty to admit that the above image is a cunning mock-up. We wouldn’t want to deceive you here at Pro. We’ll test it out and get back to you, but if the dock’s sound quality can match that of the radio inputs then it has nothing to worry about.

Yesterday, I came across a box that I had only given a cursory glance to before: the Preferred Networks settings, which can be found by clicking on Change Advanced Settings from your list of available wireless networks in Windows XP.

Stored in here was a list of all the wireless networks I’d hooked on to since I’ve had my laptop. The Wi-Fi hotspot at McCarran airport in Las Vegas used when I covered CES in January (OK, we do get a bit of glamour), the Pro Labs connection, the guest network at Microsoft’s offices. Anyone who rifled through my laptop would have a pretty good idea of where I’ve been for the past year. And what if a suspicious spouse stumbled across it and found a Wi-Fi hotspot at a hotel he/she didn’t remember you mentioning before?

How long before Windows is responsible for the first Wi-Fi divorce? I’ll give it six months.